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New and notable: Homemade pie is Chicago's hottest dessert

Move over, cupcakes: the hottest sweet in Chicago is pie by Jamie Bartosch, 10Best Chicago may be known for deep dish pizza, but the latest food trend in the Windy City involves the kind of pie with a rich

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Chicago may be known for deep dish pizza, but the latest food trend in the Windy City involves the kind of pie with a rich butter-and-lard crust, fresh filling and moan-inducing deliciousness.

Homemade pie is the hot dessert on Chicago menus this summer. With cupcakes feeling passé and the trendy doughnut scene more suited to the early morning crowd, Chicagoans are flocking to bakeries and tiny pie shops like the hipster Bang Bang Pie Shop or the artisanal Hoosier Mama Pie Company for this throwback Americana dessert.

Many Chicago bakeries sell pie with fresh, locally grown fruit: Michigan sour cherries and blueberries are popular ingredients in summer. But there are plenty of decadent oh-I-shouldn't pies, too, like Hoosier Mama's Fat Elvis Pie, with its graham cracker, peanut and pretzel crust filled with chocolate, bananas and peanut butter. It's sometimes in the lineup in this popular spot's Friday night special, when they serve a flight of pies.

If you're craving a specific kind of pie, be sure to order in advance because these tiny pie shops can sell out of certain varieties quickly.

In Chicago's up-and-coming Ravenswood Art Corridor is First Slice, a bakery connected to a hunger outreach program, giving visitors an even better reason to dig into their Almond Polka Dot Pie.

Another place where pie will feed your soul is Jimmy Jamm Sweet Potato Pie, on Chicago's South Side, where slices of the shop's namesake specialty is topped, if you'd like, with homemade sweet potato ice cream.

Whether you're craving Key lime, banana cream, whoopie or even the chicken pot variety, pie is a comfort food that requires you to sit down, slow down and eat from a plate -- a simple luxury that on-the-go lifestyles often omit.